Considering the regulatory environment in which transportation firms do business is miles from black and white, it’s no surprise that both drivers and enforcement personnel alike often are confused by the ins and outs of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s CSA.

Every year, hours-of-service questions from drivers and carriers make up the vast majority of inquiries concerning the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. In this final installment in a three-part series, we look at the 34-hour restart rules.

Every year, hours-of-service questions from drivers and carriers make up the vast majority of inquiries concerning the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. In this article, the second of a three-part series, we'll look at the 30-minute rest break requirement.

Every year, hours-of-service questions from drivers and carriers make up the vast majority of inquiries concerning the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. In this first installment in a three-part series, we look at electronic logging devices.

Falls from loading docks or trailers, back sprains from throwing tarps, slips on icy truck steps -- truck driver injuries can lead to workers' comp claims. Make sure your drivers know these key areas of responsibility that are in their hands.

Using the right tools can prevent a vast majority of workers’ comp legal nightmares. By using four strategic tools at the disposal of every trucking company, you can eliminate most major legal issues associated with workers’ comp claims.

From September 7-13 – Brake Safety Week – more than 30,000 brake inspections are expected to be conducted. Roadside inspectors will be inspecting brake-system components to identify loose and missing parts; air and hydraulic fluid leaks; worn linings, pads, drums and rotors; and other faulty brake-system components.

There are many ways to tell a story – through words in books and magazines, pictures, videos, song, and more. With the inaugural issue of the HDT Fact Book, we are telling trucking’s story through facts, numbers, statistics, charts, and graphs.

Earlier this year, attorney Bill Chamblee successfully defended FFE Transportation in a $3.5 million lawsuit after an accident between a company truck and a police car. We spoke with him about trends he's seeing in the realm of legal issues affecting motor carriers.

SCHAUMBURG, IL — Fleets should prepare for and practice what to do in the event of a serious accident just like they do for fire drills – from top management to dispatchers to drivers, said Don Jerrell, a safety expert at HNI Risk Services, to attendees of the Fleet Safety Conference Tuesday.

There’s a lot that can go wrong in any workplace, but this is especially true in industrial warehouses. Complex machinery, uncontrolled traffic, and the desire to optimize productivity means that every employee must be aware of risk factors at all times.

There is no official definition of underinflated against which to write citations, so the cops have historically been sort of making it up as they go along -- more than 30,000 tickets written on a regulation that has been proven impossible to determine.

In 2012, Verst Group Logistics had zero Department of Transportation recordable accidents. In 2013, to prove the previous year wasn’t just a fluke, Verst only had one DOT-recordable accident. How did this Kentucky-based logistics provider, with a fleet of 90 power units and 250 trailers, attain such a low number of accidents?

With Memorial Day nearly a month away, Ryder decided to interview its 2013 Driver of the Year David Hopper to find out what driving safety tips he could offer to those who will be on the roadways during the holiday weekend.

After 28 years of proposals, studies, drafts, revisions, legal battles and technological innovations – not to mention an Act of Congress – federal regulators are close to requiring most interstate commercial drivers to keep track of their work hours with an electronic device.

Carriers are required by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to take steps to prevent high-risk individuals from driving their trucks. But an initiative of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission may put a hamper on carriers’ efforts.

The National Registry of Certified Medical Examiners rule was published in April 2012 and effective in May 2012. A compliance date of May 21 of this year is quickly approaching. In its plainest form, it is a database of medical examiners who are certified by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to perform examinations of commercial vehicle drivers.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Safety, Compliance and Accountability enforcement program is one of the major legal and regulatory issues facing trucking companies, but it’s not the only one, as a veritable alphabet soup’s worth of agencies target the industry.

There’s a simple way to avoid many worker’s compensation claims: Don’t put the wrong worker to work. The “wrong worker,” simply put, is anyone who is physically unable to perform essential job functions.

Most large fleets have extensive experience with telematics: GPS location and mobile communications systems that collect data and communicate it back to a server where the fleet can access the information. As the amount and kind of data has increased in recent years, fleets have adopted tools to make sense of all that information and use it across their operation.

Whether you operate one truck or 1,000, monitoring and managing costs is one of your most important tasks. Fleets have used technology to help them control costs for some time, but the latest third- or fourth-generation systems are capable of generating tremendous amounts of information fleets can put to use.

Drivers and other employees who get injured at work may be temporarily unable to perform their jobs. If an injury prevents an employee from working, you might wonder what steps you need to take to get the employee back on the job, or how much time must pass before you can hire a replacement.

I hate rules, but there’s one I like, namely the ban on cell-phone use while driving. It’s a long way from universal state to state, but New York has just gotten very tough indeed on truck-driver use of cellular tools, and that’s fine by me.

Mobile computing is quickly becoming the platform of choice. Tablets and smartphones are far outselling laptop or desktop computers in the consumer market, and a growing number of trucking operations are deploying these devices.